By S.E. Hoffman
For the Gazette-Times | Posted: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 12:00 am
San Francisco - Attacks on scientific integrity are increasing and seriously threaten wise public policy, according to a panel assembled Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Five distinguished scientists discussed scientific integrity and dissemination of research findings and described how governments, corporations and universities are interfering for political or financial reasons.
The problem is not new. The most famous example of a scientist whose work was attacked and suppressed is Galileo Galilei.
The panelists at Tuesday's forum were Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security; Tim Killeen, president of the AGU; Judith Curry, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University and current editor-in-chief of Science magazine; and Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Gleick opened the forum by describing the many ways in which the scientific process can be abused, including attacks on scientists, falsifying or suppressing research data, manipulating reporting of scientific research and bullying scientists by threatening their professional status, funding or research.
The controversy last spring over a paper on salvage logging after the Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon involved many of these abuses, according to Gleick.
The paper was published in Science magazine in January after undergoing the usual peer review and evaluation at the journal. The authors were researchers from OSU's College of Forestry, including Daniel Donato, Joseph Fontaine, John Campbell, Douglas Robinson, Boone Kauffman and Bev Law.
They reported that their studies of both logged and unlogged areas found that salvage logging after the Biscuit Fire interfered with natural forest regeneration and increased fuel for future fires rather than decreasing it.
In February the Bureau of Land Management cut funding for the study, and it was revealed that some professors in OSU's College of Forestry had attempted to stop publication of the paper.
Although funding for the project was later restored, senior faculty in the College of Forestry, including its dean, Hal Salwasser, worked with the timber industry to counter the findings of the study.
A major problem, according to Gleick, is that funding sources for research are not routinely made public, especially when private corporations are providing the funds.
Meanwhile, over the past four decades, government funding for scientific research has steadily declined relative to corporate and private funding.
"Corporate-funded research is not necessarily bad," Gleick said. "Much good research is sponsored and funded by industry."
It becomes a problem when the resulting data is manipulated to produce a desired result, he added.
Both Gleich and Kennedy emphasized that it is essential for scientists to reveal personal financial ties to industry that might influence their conclusions. The same is true for those who review manuscripts.
All the speakers at Tuesday's forum decried the increase in suppression of scientific research that has occurred within the federal government over the past six years.
Because the study by Donato's group was funded by a federal agency, the BLM, which has pushed for increased salvage logging, the controversy intersected with the political debate over increased logging on federal lands. For example, U.S. Forest Service scientists have repeatedly complained that their research has been suppressed by political appointees now managing the agency.
The Donato case led to an internal investigation at OSU looking at whether the forestry professors had violated the academic freedom of Donato and his co-authors. Furthermore, the College of Forestry was intensely criticized for its close political ties to the logging industry. Faculty were found to have inappropriately lobbied on policy matters.
When asked about the university's response to the controversy, Kennedy said, "OSU got it right."
"Leadership in setting the standards for scientific integrity is essential," Grifo said. Those at the highest levels must make it clear that suppression of research will not be tolerated.
According to Kennedy, OSU administrators took all the necessary steps to reinforce the principles of academic freedom and scientific integrity in the aftermath of the controversy, and because of action by both state legislators and members of Congress, the threats to scientific integrity in the College of Forestry were taken seriously.
Kennedy, Gleick and other panelists emphasized the importance of establishing independent peer-review policies and procedures, both in academia and in the research arms of the federal government.